Promoting the Bookstore Price Matching Program

A new program by the Boston College Bookstore, run by Follett Bookstore Management, is helping students better afford their textbooks.

Students can now present prices of identical books sold by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other textbook sellers. As long as these prices are not from a peer-to-peer exchange, the Bookstore has the book in stock, and the price is dated seven days prior to the transaction, then the Bookstore will match its competitor’s price.

Students have been using Amazon and other online retailers to save money for some time now. It is heartening to see the Bookstore acknowledge the sometimes exorbitant prices of its textbooks and take steps to address this.

The program encourages students to shop at BC by incentivizing them. Now, when the Bookstore matches an online price, students will be able to receive their books immediately and save shipping costs.

While this program has received positive feedback from students, many are still not aware of its existence. The program was promoted through flyers and an email sent in late December. Beyond this, it did not receive extensive advertising recently and could easily go unrecognized by students who would otherwise be interested.

It would have benefited the Bookstore to promote this program more aggressively, ensuring that every student worried about textbook prices would know about this new way to save money.

This new price matching program, which Follett is implementing in all of its stores, will attract more Bookstore customers while also helping save students money. Future programs such as this should have more widespread promotion in order to spread the benefit to the maximum amount of students.

When it comes to University spending, there is a persistent issue between the administration and a number of students: a perceived lack of interest in student needs when it comes to spending money. Since the process for the next fundraising campaign is just beginning, now is the perfect opportunity to confront these complaints from the outset, establishing a desire to collaborate with students on how money is spent. […]